Wil McCarthy - The Collapsium

“Maybe God needed that,” Shiao suggested matter-of-factly.

Vivian gave an absent nod. “Yes, that’s what Mother said. But couldn’t he just, you know, create his own moment of peace? Why should he need to take Grammy’s? When I was older, I think I would wake up sometimes, wondering if that God of hers were looming over me , ready to steal my dreams or my morning breath or something. What a puny motive! He doesn’t get to do much of that anymore, and I’m glad about it. History’s greatest thug; phooey, I disown him! The day I stand at his throne I’ll place him under arrest; I swear I will.” She cast a gloomy look at the bloodstained deck. ”Rest in peace, Wenders Rodenbeck. Rest, all the victims of this atrocity.”

And there was other talk as well: Was Declarant Sykes still looking for them? Should they attempt to render the ship invisible? That wouldn’t work, of course—it’d simply let the sunlight through, to poach all the remaining people inside.

Bruno’s grief had now become unbearable; finally it commanded his attention. He ignored the whole discussion, simply throwing an arm over his face and weeping, weeping, his tears seeming to come from an endless reservoir somewhere. He’d been powerless, all those years ago, to save Enzo and Bernice de Towaji when the Old Girona Bistro fell down on them. He knew they were dying in there, knew there was time to save them if only, if only… And so, today, had he been helpless to save Wenders. And Tamra, yes—how very grievously he’d failed herl Perhaps he was, quite simply, powerless after all. Perhaps all his deeds and accomplishments were so much illusion, just chance and foolish self-deception. It seemed a plausible enough notion, at that moment.

“What do we do with the… body?” someone asked.

“It seems to have gelled. Look, it’s a solid mass. Weird. Into the fax with it, I’d say.”

“I’ll do it. Here.”

“Oh, God! Oh, God! Save us! Hasn’t there been enough? Deposit us in some safe location before you dash off on this mission!” That sounded like Tamra’s friend Tusite. Bruno forgave her the outburst; Tamra surrounded herself with all manner of silly people, but very few of them were weak . It didn’t imply weakness, to bend and break under the strain of these events. Indeed, quite the reverse—it was only human , part of the basic mammalian wiring, to feel terrified when helpless. And to grieve for one’s Queen, yes, as for no other thing except, perhaps, one’s own children.

He wanted to comfort her. He wanted to be comforted. He wanted comfort, period. But he sensed, he knew, that no one would have anything to offer but their own grief, and perhaps some platitudes. Such a tragedy. We all loved her so well and so personally, each in our own way . How trite! How monstrous! Platitudes existed for this very purpose; to underscore the dreary, hopeless banality of human suffering. Should he carve a pyramid with his bare hands? Circumnavigate a world? Would that help ? Even for himself, he had no words or thoughts of wisdom, only platitudes.

And then Muddy’s voice spoke up. “There are no’s-s-safe places, madam, and no chance to look for them if there were. Time is of the essence if we’re to foil this… madman’s plot.”

That got on Bruno’s nerves: Muddy’s tone was, as ever, grating and whiny and filled with terrified self-pity. And yet, there he was, acting to save the Queendom while Bruno himself sniveled and sobbed on the couch. How humiliating! How base! The thought only made him cry harder.

“Mercury isn’t a small place,‘’ Vivian Rajmon observed.

“Indeed,” Muddy said, “and we’ve only a few minutes to decide where to begin.”

“We look for deep-black solar collectors, you said. Super-absorbers?”

“C-c-correct. But even those will be small, compared to the size of a world . Even with the best sensors and algorithms, we are hindered by simple geometry. Searching the entire surface could take hours.”

“Hours,” Cheng Shiao brooded. “With Sykes ready to open fire upon us at any time. I’m surprised he hasn’t already!”

“Perhaps he isn’t looking,” Vivian said. “Perhaps he’s busy hatching some new villainy. ”Then she paused, and came over to Bruno’s bedside. She put a hand on his shoulder, squeezed. “It must be hard, Declarant: all of us drawing upon you so desperately, in your hour of need. Even your own duplicate is doing it! But we’ll be there very soon. Will you join us for a moment?”

Finally, at these words, Bruno felt the flow of tears begin to ebb. Not so much because Vivian had requested it— although he’d had a little soft spot in his heart for her since she was eleven years old—but because he didn’t want to arrive at their destination and have Marlon see him weep. Absurd, of course, since Marlon had probably seen Muddy weep for twenty continuous years, had in fact coaxed tears from a Bruno until he became a Muddy, over and over and over again. But he supposed the mind didn’t need to work rationally, so long as it worked.

“Oh, forgive me.” He sniffed, wiping his eyes and nose with a sleeve.

“Of course,” she said gently. “Of course we do.”

He consoled himself with one thought: that the Sabadell-Andorra Earthquake had been an accident, an act of God. Inevitable, really, and buried back in an age when death— especially by accident—was still the norm. These more recent deaths were something else entirely: caused . He glanced up: Mercury was fully visible, already as large as a mottled gray apple in the view, and growing visibly.

He sat up and tried wanly to bring some of the iron back into his voice. “Do… forgive me, please. The loss of so many, including Her Majesty, has… well. Yes. You know as well as I. But of course we’ll be to the planet in a few minutes, unbalanced or no. An unfortunate property of time is that it can’t be made to wait.”

Then, after a moment’s reflection, he said, “Our enemy, of course, has the same problem. Things are moving quickly. If we’re as quick, we may very well land safely. Visually, Marlon will be looking straight into the sun for us, which ought to confuse even quite sophisticated sensors. And gravitationally… well, let’s just say this ship has an unusual—and decidedly minimal—signature. And if he really isn’t looking, if he does presume us dead, we may be able to slip right in.”

“He’ll see us in orbit ,” Shiao protested, “if we’re forced to scour the surface for signs of him.”

Bruno, still sniffling a bit, pinched himself on the chin. “Hmm. Well. We needn’t search the entire planet, surely. He must have his energy converters on the daylight side right now, after all. And his beam weapons as well, since they can’t fire through the planet.” He sat up straighten “In fact, he must have had collectors on the daylight side continuously for the past several weeks. Either that, or very, very large batteries, and since the former is much easier…”

“What’s to say the power source is near the base?” Shiao asked skeptically.

“Efficiency,” Deliah said, ticking the answers off on her fingers. “Safety. Cost. Time. Light-lag. Marlon may be a good faker, but in private he is—demonstrably!—not a very patient person. He’s gone to a lot of trouble over this, but I doubt he’s gone to any extra trouble, or put up with any suboptimal equipment, or otherwise made things harder on himself than they absolutely need to be.”

Fighting dizzy nausea, Bruno nodded. “Indeed. I quite agree.”

Muddy was huddled at one of the hypercomputer interfaces, tapping figures in madly. “Mercury completes a revolution every fifty-eight days, an orbit every eighty-eight. Daylight lasts eight and a half weeks at the equator, so we’re looking pole to pole in an arc from the eastern terminator to thirty degrees west of the noon line. But to be consistent with observations, the g-gravity lasers couldn’t be within, er, thirty degrees of the north pole, whereas from the south …”